Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial
"..While many people agree that Irving may have a bee in his bonnet about the Holocaust, they say his other work is valuable. Evans helpfully deflates that view with a chapter on Irving's book on the Destruction of Dresden. Whereas most scholars suggest that at most 40-50,000 people died in the firebombing of the city, Irving has suggested that up to a quarter of a million may have died. How did he do this? Well, without any real evidence he took one estimate of 40,000 and argued that the assessor had just dropped a "1" at the beginning in response to Soviet pressure. His source for a total of 200-250,000 amount to little more than fifth-hand hearsay of a document that had been excerpted, transcribed, transcribed again and copied, and which was a fraud in the first place. Evans points out that Irving tried to exaggerate the number of people in Dresden by cited 1.25 million ration cards, except that the British had previously dropped thousands of ration cards in order to muck up the Nazi bureaucracy. And, oh yes, Evans points out that Irving ignores or minimizes contemporary German documents that show that the death total was about the tenth of his estimate. All in all, this is a very useful book, one that should help demolish the reputation of a most overrated and sinister figure. .."
Dumbest thing I've heard in many moons, except when reading Supreme Court decisions of late. Why would the Soviets pressure people to underestimate how many Germans the English had killed? If anything they'd want the Brits to look bad. OTOH, maybe they didn't want the Brits to get the credit for killing so many Germans. Germans not being held in high regard at the time.